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Thursday, August 24, 2006

Series Of Unfortunate Events

In the month of May 2005, Seb, Jonah and I were in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA for a month on work. The month as a whole was a very memorable experience. We drove to Brown county national park where nature’s display of greenery was at its best. We drove to Niagara Falls and Old fort Niagara from there. We tried all the Indian restaurants in the city and enjoyed some good training programs and met interesting people. But the last three days makes this trip the most memorable one.

June-2nd-2005 …Thursday

Bj, Sush (My colleagues) were working in Indianapolis office. So that evening, we all decided to go out for a dinner together at an Indian restaurant at the downtown. After parking our car at a main junction, we walked around the place. We searched for the Indian Restaurant and had a good dinner. By the time we were done and reached back to the junction, it was 20 minutes past 10 PM. We went around the Junction but did not find our car. The board next to the parking lot said that we could park cars only till 10:00pm. So one thing was clear - Our car has been towed away. The gorgeous blue Sonata was towed away!

Indianapolis Downtown Square.

Now, none of us had had this experience before, so we all started discussing how to go about it. We called 911 and tried to find out how to handle this. The lady at the other end told us where we needed to go. Since the audio was not clear, we had to hang up the phone without properly understanding her. Now, the next thing was to search for the place. We walked into a hotel near by and asked for the directions to this place. After getting few hints from them, we started walking towards the office, where we expected to find our car. This place was only about 2 to 3 blocks away, so we reached the place very quickly. There were some more folks like us; some worried, some pretty cool, as though it wasn’t something that bothered anymore. Jonah had to go in and talk to some guy as the car was rented on his name and we had to pay a fine of $65.

Well now the question was – “where is our car?”

Answer – “8 blocks from here sir, we keep all the cars there.”

So we walk again for about a mile or so, at almost around midnight to the suburbs of the city. If we hadn’t been a group of 5, one could not even think of walking on those roads all alone at that odd hour. The streets were dangerously deserted. Shabby houses hinted towards a poorer suburb. But anyways, while in a group, such experiences are always a fun. We had our share of jokes and then reached the place. Plenty of cars still waited there for their owners. After this tiring experience, we returned back to our hotel and retired for the day.

June-3rd -2005 -Friday

We had nice plans for the evening; to watch a Hindi film “Bunty Aur Bubli” at one of the IMAX Theatres in the city museum. Jonah, Seb and I walked out of office a little early and after freshening up, drove to the theatre. Obviously we were very happy trying our driving turns on the beautiful blue Sonata car.

Seb was driving, I sat next to him. Jonah was in the back seat. So as usual, we were talking loud, joking and having fun. When we were near the parking lot, there was a good looking girl who smiled at Seb and neatly offered him the parking lot ticket. As always we loved pulling Seb’s leg. (He is the silent type).We teased him about it.

Seb was so excited about all the fun talks that he quickly hit on gas to accelerate. We had to take a slight turn and enter into the parking lot and a pillar stood in front of us. Seb drove straight and hit the pillar with a bang. The side mirror crushed and turned to face me. We were all laughing till that moment and suddenly all of us turned shockingly silent. Seb did not stop but took off and the entire side of the car dragged itself past the pillar. Obviously our mood was out. We did not know how to handle this situation. Of course the company insurance would pay for it, but still this was a situation which we did not know how to handle at that moment.

Surprisingly the movie “B Aur B” managed to take away the tension for at least a few hours. Once we were out of the world of Bunty and Bubli, the bad shaped Sonata, brought us back to the reality.

The After Effects.

June-4th -2005-Sunday

So after all these bad events, we are ready to say good bye to Indiana and board our flight to Colorado Springs. Our flight timing was at 2:00 PM. After calling Hertz, we found out that the insurance from the company would cover the expenses and we only had to fill up a form. This reduced our tension a little and we decided to have some good Mexican food for lunch. Well now this place was really late in service as they had just opened a couple of minutes before. So after eating the food in a hurry we rushed to the airport. We went directly to return the car and filled out the required forms. After which we waited for a bus that would take us to the terminal. By the time we were near the counter it was 1:30 PM. The lady at the counter said that we could not board the flight as we had to be at least 45 minutes before the take off. She could not send our checked in baggages now to the flight.She then enquired about the next flight and put us on it. And that was at 7:30 PM. That is, waiting for 6 long hours in airport.

After that long wait, it was not a smooth journey again, due to lot of turbulence. A funny apprentice flight attendant, who was scared of any beep in the plane, kept unknowingly entertaining us. So finally we reached Colorado Springs. We were back home!

Wow! Sure seems you had your share of troubles. Isn't it great though, how we can look back on things that happened and laugh. Just helps us learn, that nothing is so bad after all and time heals. I'm sure even through all the ordeal, you had a lot of fun:)

@ Reborn - Thanks...:-) Yes I do recall some or may be most of the incidents very clearly...As though inscribed in my mind for ever. Sometimes i wonder if its even good at all? :-)

@Bharat - Thanks,.....Yep it was great fun.

@Perspective - Thanks.

@ Travel Plaza - Yes...its really interesting to notice that now, i look back on those days and see them as good learning experiences. I do have another story of Snow blizard to come soon. Which again is total fun.

@ Harsha- Havent had such exp in Bangalore I hope i never have one :-)Loved B& B, because of their characters, wow! I would like to be something like that...try all sort of things in one life!

I am a big fan of Mecican food. Love the Veggie Expresso Burrito. We had this chain of Restaurant in Colorado called 3 Margarrita...the food there is awesome.

@ Sush - Now that you are Indi...go back to the square and leave the car there...:-))) Yep...it was real fun.